MEXICO CITY (AP) – Famous drug chief Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the assassination of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, was captured Friday by Mexican forces nearly a decade after leaving from a Mexican prison and back to drug trafficking, the Mexican navy. dit.
Caro Quintero was arrested after a search dog named “Max” found him hiding in a brush in the town of San Simon, in the state of Sinaloa, during a joint operation by the Navy and the Attorney General’s Office, according to a Navy statement. The site was located in the mountains near the Sinaloa border with the northern border state of Chihuahua.
Mexico’s national detention registry indicated the time of Caro Quintero’s arrest around noon. There were two arrest warrants pending for him, as well as an extradition request from the U.S. government.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said in a statement Friday afternoon that Caro Quintero had been arrested for extradition and would be detained in the Altiplano’s maximum security prison, about 50 miles west of Mexico City.
A fragment of a very short video broadcast by the navy showed Caro Quintero, with a blurred face, dressed in jeans, a wet blue shirt and a wide khaki jacket held by both arms by men wearing camouflage uniforms and wearing rifles. assault.
A Blackhawk Navy helicopter carrying 15 people crashed near the coastal city of Los Mochis during the operation and killed 14 of those on board, according to the Navy statement. The available information indicated that he suffered an “accident”, the cause of which had not yet been determined, according to the statement.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said via Twitter that the helicopter crashed shortly before landing after supporting those who carried out the capture of Caro Quintero. He expressed his condolences to the families of the victims and said the accident would be investigated.
Caro Quintero had been released in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the 1985 kidnapping and murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Officer Enrique “Kiki “Camarena. The brutal assassination marked a low point in US-Mexico relations.
Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara cartel, had since returned to drug trafficking and had sparked bloody battles in the border state of Sonora, in northern Mexico.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has maintained that he is not interested in detaining drug lords and prefers to avoid violence.
But the arrest came just days after Lopez Obrador met with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House.
There had been tensions between the Mexican government and the DEA after Mexico enacted a law limiting the U.S. agency’s operations. But recently, the new head of the DEA in Mexico received a visa, which U.S. officials marked as a sign of progress in the relationship.
Shortly before Caro Quintero’s arrest on Friday, US Ambassador Ken Salazar told a reporter meeting that there had been a breakthrough in the security relationship.
“I have been in meetings with the Secretary of State and the Security Cabinet, along with all of our agencies that have included the new head of the DEA sitting to my right,” Salazar said. “So if we weren’t welcome here in Mexico, that wouldn’t happen.”
An appeals court overturned Caro Quintero’s sentence in 2013, but the Supreme Court upheld the sentence. By then it was too late; Caro Quintero was discouraged in a vehicle waiting for him.
He was on the FBI’s most wanted list, with a $ 20 million reward for his capture through the State Department’s Narcotics Rewards Program. He was added to the FBI’s top 10 most wanted list in 2018.
Caro Quintero was one of the leading suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana in the United States in the late 1970s. He blamed Camarena for a raid on a marijuana plantation in 1984. In 1985, Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, supposedly by orders of Caro Quintero. His tortured body was found a month later.
Late Friday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland expressed deep gratitude to the U.S. government to Mexican authorities for the arrest of Caro Quintero and offered condolences to Mexican military personnel who died in the crash. from the helicopter.
“There is no hiding place for anyone who kidnaps, tortures and kills U.S. law enforcement,” he said in a statement. “Today’s arrest is the culmination of the tireless work of the DEA and its Mexican partners to bring Caro-Quintero to justice for his alleged crimes, including the torture and execution of DEA Special Agent Enrique ‘ “Kiki ‘Camarena. We will seek his immediate extradition to the United States so that he can be tried for these crimes in the same justice system, Special Agent Camarena died defending.”
Mike Vigil, the former head of international operations at the DEA, said Caro Quintero was believed to have been operating independently more recently, although there were rumors that he had returned with the Sinaloa cartel.
Caro Quintero was from Badiraguato, Sinaloa, the same area as Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel that now serves a life sentence in the United States. He eventually became one of the “godfathers” of Mexican drug trafficking.
Vigil said he was surprised by the arrest of Caro Quintero, given Lopez Obrador’s expressed disinterest in pursuing drug cartel leaders, but added that the DEA will never stop looking for someone who killed an agent.
“We did not see much effort (to capture Caro Quintero) in recent years, especially when (López Obrador) came in and immediately began to dismantle much of the infrastructure and bilateral relations between the US and Mexico. To drug trafficking. said Vigil.
In Sonora, one of the states hardest hit by Caro Quintero’s efforts to reclaim its territory, there was hope that his arrest could help.
“I think in Sonora, in general, there could be calm, and yes, relief for us, because I think the disappearances will decrease,” said Cecilia Duarte, an activist with a team of volunteer searchers in Sonora looking for clandestine graves. of the missing. Some activists have been threatened and even killed in Sonora in the midst of Caro Quintero’s territorial wars with the children of “El Chapo.”
But, Duarte said, Caro Quintero “is only one part (of the conflict), the conflict does not end.”
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Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.